CAP: Conservation or production?

What to do with the European Community's Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP) has probably been one of the most hotly debated issues in Europe
over the past decade. It has come under attack from farmers, environmentalists,
industrialists and Third World groups alike. The essence of the CAP is basically
a system of guaranteed farm prices for specific products, way above those at
world market levels, combined with various measures to block the entry of
cheaper products from outside the Community. In the public eye, the CAP is often
associated with surplus production and escalating costs. In 1991, the EC spent
33 billion ECU (some US$ 45 billion), or 60 per cent of its entire budget, on
CAP alone. But the bulk of this money does not go to the farmers. A full
two-thirds of it is devoted to non-productive activities such as stockpiling and
destruction of the surpluses, or getting rid of them on the world market through
export subsidies.

In recent years, EC governments and Eurocrats alike have been
growing more and more alarmed about this policy-induced nightmare: an
ever-rising bill for an agriculture that employs an ever-shrinking minority of
Europeans. But the real pressure to overhaul the current CAP comes from the GATT
negotiators and foreign countries such as the USA, which see the EC price and
export subsidies, combined with protectionist measures to stop cheap
agricultural products from entering the EC market, as unfair competition for
their own farmers.

The heart of the now agreed upon CAP reform is a dramatic 30 per
cent cut in prices paid to cereal farmers until 1994, topped off by a 15 per
cent reduction in beef prices and a 5 per cent lowering of butter prices, among
others. These cuts are designed to move EC farm output towards world market
price levels and progressively eliminate current subsidies. The European
Commission argues that high prices paid to EC farmers in the past have
stimulated dangerously intensive forms of agriculture together with the
encumbrance of surplus production and environmental pollution. The new price
reductions will, according to the Commission, help arrest further
intensification of agriculture and thus alleviate the escalating damage to the
environment.

All this sounds wonderful, but in reality things might be quite
different. Farmers in the EC have indeed benefited from guaranteed prices above
world market levels. But those prices paid to farmers have been progressively
lowered over the years while more and more money is devoted to export subsidies.
By increasing export subsidies, the EC ends up dumping its produce on the world
market, which itself leads to lower prices to compete with. Thus the vicious
circle gets worse and worse.

Contrary to the Commission's projections, farm price reductions in
the EC have always lead to greater intensification and more surplus production.
Between 1963 and 1983, EC cereal prices were reduced by 45 per cent, and since
then by another 30 per cent. During this period, agricultural production
increased and surpluses built up. Obviously' if farmers are faced with lower
prices they either go out of business or they increase production, depending on
whether they can make further investments or not. The EC farming community has
declined 35 per cent over the past 15 years, while ever increasing production
has become concentrated among fewer and fewer farms. Today, 60 per cent of the
EC's grains are produced by only 6 per cent of the Community's cereal farmers,
75 per cent of the milk comes from 25 per cent of the dairy farms, and 80 per
cent of the pigs are raised by 10 per cent of the pork producers. Slashing
prices yet again under the new CAP regime is more than likely to stop up this
process: further concentration of production on fewer farms, which will have to
drastically intensify their production methods in order to keep up.

Compensation ... for whom?

The other side of the CAP reform coin is compensation. The
policy-makers recognise that the newly imposed price levels are below the
production costs of three-quarters of Europe's farmers, who will have to retire
or find another job if nothing else is done. Only a quarter of Europe's largest
farmers would be able to keep up with the lower prices if they manage to
increase output and lower their costs. So a system of compensation payments is
being set up according to the number of hectares each farmer was planting, in
the case of cereals for example, and the average yield in each region, before
the CAP reform. Thus, if you are a farmer in a high yield region and you have
done your best to increase EC surplus production over the past years, you are
likely to get most of the compensation. However, if you happen to be a farmer in
a disadvantaged part of Europe that tends to provide low yields and harbour
small farming production systems, you'll end up getting the smallest part of the
cake and a compensation that keeps you in the same trouble as you were in
before.

In modelling the reform, one 'mea culpa' of the EC Commission was
that, up until now, the bulk of the price subsidies ended up with the minority
of well-off farmers. However, with the new compensation system linked to yield
and acreage, the same is likely to happen. It is calculated that 80 per cent of
the compensation will end up in the hands of 20 per cent of Europe's farmers.
The end result is that the 20 per cent better-off farms in the EC will, on the
one hand, react to lowered prices by further intensifying their production, and
on the other hand, catch most of the compensation from Brussels.

Obviously, an important question for farmers is: how long will the
compensation last? And for the national governments: how much will it cost?
Nobody really knows. Apart from the costs of the compensation system itself, a
huge bureaucracy will have to be put in place to monitor who has the right to
what compensation. In one German land, Bavaria, it is estimated that over 200
extra staff are needed to do the counting. Officials from the EC Commission
swear that the compensations will be paid until the end of time. But farmers
rightly remain sceptical. As one observer stated to the press, 'The farmers know
that they are being paid to do nothing. That is a very vulnerable position to be
in.' The first attack against the compensation package might already come this
year from the UK, whose turn at the rotating six-month EC presidency began in
July 1992 with the firm intention to lower EC expenditure on just about
everything. It might very well be that the compensation system merely serves as
a short-term bait on paper to get the larger farmers' unions to accept the
reform package and close the discussion.

Set aside ... for what?

One major condition for the large farms to receive the
compensation is that they have to set aside at least 15 per cent of their arable
land, which means not using it for food production. This measure is intended to
ensure that EC farm surpluses are once and for ail cut down. Many doubt whether
it will really work to that effect, though. The set aside scheme is basically
imported from the United States - where it has proved not to work. Despite 20
years of its application in the US, the system backfired: surplus production has
increased continuously there, while whole regions have been losing their
farmers.

The CAP set aside scheme is also often presented as a neat way to
reduce production and recover soil productivity by taking the pressure off part
of Europe's arable land. This is simply not true. 'Setting aside' land in the
new policy is not defined as leaving it alone to recover from intensive
practices: heavy machines, toxic pesticides, chemical fertilisers, massive
irrigation and draining. It means, rather, that farmers are not allowed to grow
food per se on it. This is where Europe's biomass advocates come in. Potatoes,
colza, cereals and all sorts of other crops can be grown on the set aside land
if they are used for non-food purposes such as making bioethanol, biocarburants,
starch and other components for industrial use. Piles of studies are financed by
the EC Commission and special subsidy programmes go to industry to make it
technically feasible to use the set aside land more intensively than ever by
producing raw materials for a newly emerging biomass industry. As long as you
don't grow 'food' on the set aside land, you are free to do what you want with
it. There is no limit on the amount of chemical fertiliser, herbicides or
pesticides you can use on this land. Rather than reduce production, the
set-aside rule will, again, intensify it.

If you are a large 'competitive' farmer and are not interested in
the biomass business, there is an easy way around the set aside scheme. The set
aside quotas are tradeable with other farmers. So farmers with poor soils might
obtain and accumulate set aside parts from large farmers working on the best
soils who then have their hands free to grow whatever surplus they want. As
there are no rules about with whom you can trade your set aside land, we might
end up with a situation in which the better-offfarmers in northern France, UK
and Denmark continue to produce Europe's food surplus, while entire regions in
Greece, Spain and Portugal are officially 'set aside'.

Europe going green?

All in all, the reform will push European agriculture further into
the split that was ripped open with the launching of the first CAP decades ago:
'real' intensive and large farms provide the bulk of Europe's agricultural
output, while the 'unproductive' smaller farms can't keep up. To a large extent
that split is geographical. The EC Commission divides Europe into 'advantaged'
and 'disadvantaged' regions. Currently, the 'real' crop farming is done by large
holdings concentrated in northern France, and parts of England and Denmark,
while the intensive animal production takes place in the Netherlands, parts of
Belgium, northern Germany and northern Italy. These farms roughly account for 25
per cent of the Community's agricultural land, while the remaining 75 per cent
is dismissed as lacking economic efficiency.

By lowering prices and channelling the bulk of compensation
payments to the already 'advantaged' regions and farms, this split will be
further enhanced. With the current CAP reform there is simply no agricultural
future for 75 per cent of the Community's farmers. For some countries, such as
Spain, Portugal and Greece, this means that there is no future for agriculture
at all, as virtually all of their farmers fall into this 'disadvantaged' group.
But also in the better-off countries, many farmers will not survive the
onslaught. In trying to figure out the future of their pesticide sales, the
German agro-industry already reckons that only 80,000 of Germany's 400,000
farmers will be in business by the year 2002. The industry remains optimistic,
though, as they expect that those fewer farmers will actually increase their use
of chemicals to intensify operations.

The masterminds behind the CAP reform figured that they had to do
something for the losers, and came up with a series of 'accompanying measures'.
With 75 per cent of Europe's farmers not needed any more for production
purposes, the policy-makers decided to use some of the arguments of conservation
groups by saying that the time has now come to recognise that farmers have an
important role in the protection of the rural environment and management of
landscapes, and that they should be recompensed accordingly. The move is clever
in several respects. It allows the CAP reformers to present their package as
'socially just' and 'environmentally friendly', as for the first time these
considerations are explicitly taken into account. Proudly presented as the
'Agri-Environmental Action Programme', this new part of CAP offers subsidies to
farmers if they start growing organically without chemicals or stop draining,
irrigation and ploughing up meadows. You can also get money if you stick to rare
breeds or local crop varieties in danger of extinction.

But small farmers will have to hurry, if they want to pocket any
of the ECUs earmarked for 'environmental services'. The budget is extremely
limited: 400 million ECU (some US$ 540 million) in the first year, up to 900
million (or US$ 1.2 billion) in the fifth year. Beyond then, no further
guarantees. This is merely 1 to 2 per cent of what Brussels spends right now on
its agricultural policies! And it is meant for three-quarters of the Community's
farmers, who otherwise have no future at all!

Delinking agriculture and environment

Despite the enthusiastic reactions from EC bureaucrats, hard-nosed
economists and free-traders worldwide, the new CAP reform is directing Europe's
agriculture straight towards a profound disaster. Basically the reform amounts
to a violent separation of a 'productive' and 'competitive' minority that
produces the bulk of Europe's food and raw materials for industry, and a
written-off majority that gets paid to do some environmentally-friendly
freewheeling or just go out of business.

With respect to genetic resources management and the vulnerability
of our uniform crops and livestock, the reform could not be more sinister.
Forced to increase productivity further, the competitive minority will be more
demanding of and reliant upon ever fewer varieties and animal breeds to be able
to attain the maximum results. Already, the most productive European farmers
plant no more than one or two of the highest yielding crop varieties, each of
them genetically uniform. This trend will unfortunately only be reinforced by
the new CAP. Europe's agro-ecosystems will be further standardised and
concentrated in fewer areas that allow for even fewer crop varieties to be sown
on larger acreages. With the new CAP we are definitely heading towards a
European agriculture based on the same wheat from Denmark to Greece, and the
same cow from Holland to Portugal. The use of chemicals, fertilisers and
hormones to sustain this unsustainable production will certainly expand, while
regionally adapted and genetically diverse crop varieties and animal races will
be forced into extinction.

In the animal sector, the CAP 'logic' is atrocious, as farmers are
further pushed to separate milk and meat production, which means mixed breeds
will be slaughtered as 'illogical'. With the drop in beef prices, specialised
beef producers get a premium of 90 ECUs for each animal. Dairy farmers, trying
to sell their unproductive cows, get nothing apart from falling beef prices. And
with the drop in milk prices, the dairy farmers have no choice but to intensify
further. This vicious price system will lead to an even deeper separation
between meat and milk production, with each type of farmer trying to make it in
his or her own sector, and write off any future for rustic, mixed breeds. There
is no room for anything less than the pure and thoroughbred.

The 'accompanying measures' to promote some sustainable farming
and nature conservation for the losers in the race will certainly not compensate
the loss of diversity in the productive sector. The rule is intensification and
uniformity, the exception is caring for the environment. The rule provokes
extinction while the exception allows for conservation as long as there is money
available. As the genetic resources community has slowly started to realise, the
only way out of our spiral towards ever increasing genetic vulnerability on the
farm is through the integration of production and conservation, rather than
their separation. In this context, the last CAP reform is one giant step in just
the wrong direction.

Agricultural policy: what reform ?

Hardly a week goes by these days without some report in the news
about farmers protesting in the EC. The reform of the Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP) threatens to put most of them out of a job, as prices will be further
reduced in order to streamline the productive sector to a few competitive
enterprises. At the same time, consumers are growing more critical and vocal
about the quality of the food supply and how crops are grown and animals raised.
Reports of nitrate overloads in soils and water supply, hormones in meat,
chemical residues and heavy metals in fruits and vegetables are stirring up
concerns about how wonderful all this cheap food really is.

The single largest factor shaping the direction of farming and of
our food system is agricultural policy, which in the EC countries boils down
today to the reform of the CAP, agreed upon by the 12 Agricultural Ministers on
21 May 1992. Hailed by the press as 'the most radical overhaul of the Common
Agricultural Policy in its 30-year history' (1), the CAP reform takes the
industrialisation of agriculture one major, and perhaps final, leap forward. At
the heart of the plan is a new, enigmatic and radical split of agriculture into
the 'productive' and 'non-productive' sectors. 'Real' farming will be reserved
for the most machine-like factories of northern Europe. These are the most
intensified units producing food stuffs in an environment where cows stand on
cement floors and lettuce is grown in nutrient solutions. Those producing under
these conditions will be the only ones who might be able to chase over the price
cuts to compensate income loss by increased volume of output. The few farmers
that will be able to keep up - perhaps 20 to 25 per cent according to some
calculations - will be the ones where productivity-raising technologies will be
directed, accumulated and concentrated.

All the rest, about 75 per cent of our farms today, according to
the same estimates, will be slated into the 'non-productive' sector, and with it
most of southern Europe. On to these people and these regions, Brussels will
initially sprinkle a rather fatal dose of payments and compensations to leave
agriculture altogether or receive annually scrutinised subsidies for providing
'other services': landscape management, agro-tourism or ecologically benign
earth-scratching. Obviously, nobody knows how long these subsidies will last.
The next reform might have to take care of them.

The picture looming over European agriculture is one of a profound
split. Quantity and output will be the realm of the productive sector, promoted
and protected by the hardcore Ministries of Economic Affairs and Agriculture.
Quality and diversity will be the job of the eco-service sector, weakly backed
up by Ministries of Environment or Social Affairs. Such a division is a disaster
in terms of safeguarding and using genetic diversity. Paying people to conserve
outside of production systems is like inviting a hangman to cure your stiff
neck. Diversity does not thrive in deep sleep. It must live and grow, or it dies
out. Separating conservation from production - paying a few farmers to produce
and compensating all the others for managing the environment - will only
exacerbate the social and environmental problems that previous policies created.

The division is also a disaster for the 'productive' sector
itself. The question is really what type of agriculture we want - and how long
it should last. Do we want to go on diminishing the capacity of our farmlands
and livestock to carry the load of exploitation with sophisticated and expensive
external technologies, that tend to pollute as much as marginalise the role of
people? Do we want to continue heightening the risks attached to the
vulnerability of genetically uniform plants and animals? Do we want our
agriculture to revolve around an ever declining number of species and varieties,
with the same food produced everywhere and controlled by a few interest groups?
Or on the contrary, do we want to see diversity come back to the farmlands and
markets, and strengthen the balances and security force of our cropping systems,
rural economies, relations with developing countries and personal lives? We have
the choice.

Diversity, both social and biological, will have to be reinstated
into production systems and the relationships that animate our rural and urban
societies. Forcing the already intensified and genetically impoverished
super-farms into a deepening spiral to produce more for less will push them
further to the edge of biological disaster. A holistic and long-term strategy
for agricultural development is more urgent than ever.

In sum, we are facing a proposed reform of Europe's agricultural
system that amounts to no reform at all. It will concentrate the ills where they
hurt most, within a reduced agricultural production scheme, letting the rest
flounder under the banner of environmental and social difficulties. Clearly, if
we want to create an agricultural strategy that is the slightest bit
sustainable, in economic, environmental and human terms, then we have to take a
more integrated approach. For as long as people will continue to produce food,
by growing crops and raising livestock, production must be anchored within an
explicit environmental and cultural framework.

The CAP desperately needs to be reformed, but in a direction that
integrates the social and environmental dimensions of agriculture, those
so-called 'externalities' that economists currently ignore. Genetic diversity is
a vital component of both these dimensions. It is a cultural heritage-that
designs our societies and which people need to be able to continue moulding, and
it is a tool to reform agricultural practices towards more viable forms of
production. The cultural uniformity and the environmental damages of chemical
farming are both inextricably linked to genetic erosion. We need an agricultural
development programme that aggressively reintroduces diversity into our fields,
markets and lives. In short, we have to reinstate diversity as a social strategy
for survival.

Europe's agricultural policy should call upon those institutions
that are storing the remaining folk varieties and landraces to get them growing
again in the fields, and provide mechanisms to make that possible. Diversifying
agriculture, and our agro-ecosystems at large, must start by putting a wider
range of varieties into the production system. Heterogeneous landraces,
multiline varieties, varietal mixtures and multiple cropping systems have to be
developed and readapted to pull farming out of its spiral towards sterility and
bankruptcy. This would be of benefit to the farmers, who could substantially
improve the economic and ecological viability of their farms by having renewed
access to crop varieties that are hardy, resistant, stable and better tasting.
And it would obviously be of benefit to consumers, who would have more choice
and a less vulnerable and less polluting food system.

Conservation of folk seeds is doomed if it is delinked from
production, and our farming systems are in dire need of diversification. The
answer seems obvious. An agriculture that is sustainable needs to revolve around
diversity and social control over resources to meet social demands. The
imperative, then, is not to keep deepening the very dangerous split but to
rebuild the relationships that allowed farming, and agri'culture', to evolve for
all those years. That means getting the resources back on to the farms and
giving people the space and capacities to keep working with them. Certainly, the
idea is not to push the clock backward and make every farmer a breeder.-But if
we do not get the resources back into circulation and if we do not decentralise
control and management of those resources, we continue on our spiral towards
dependency and vulnerability.

Legal policies: renegotiating rights and responsibilities

If our agricultural policies are in need of reorientation, so are
the legal systems that affect management and the use of biological diversity.
The rules and laws currently in force do everything to reduce competition in the
seed market and stifle innovation in plant breeding. Legal tools and regimes
governing the use of our genetic heritage are extremely powerful. But they must
be transformed into creative measures that will promote responsible action with
respect to conservation, social control and exploitation of our plant heritage.

The two sets of laws governing the use of genetic resources - seed
registration systems and intellectual property regimes - must be revised
urgently to diversify the seed supply and balance monopoly rights with a clear
set of obligations.

Regarding seed registration, it is urgent for national governments
and the European Community to relax the very stringent laws that determine who
can sell which seeds in Europe and what criteria they have to meet. The need to
register varieties on a list before being able to commercialise them is not a
bad idea, but the problem lies in the requirements to get them on the list: all
geared towards uniformity.

The current registration system works against genetic diversity,
and its use in agriculture, in at least two ways. First, as explained earlier,
the criteria for certification do not allow for the legal marketing of
traditional varieties and anything less than highly pure, elite cultivars. This
effectively outlaws the entire spectrum of folk varieties, and thus hampers the
efforts of people working with them. Second, even if criteria for registration
were loosened to allow for more diverse planting materials to be marketed and
offered to growers, fee levels would have to be cut. Current charges to get and
keep a variety on the list are prohibitive for the many grassroots organisations
that might be interested in doing so.

Several official people working on genetic resources conservation
for their governments know that this is a biased system and some administrators
are starting to recognise it as well. There is every argument in favour of
starting to redress this imbalance through the creation of an integrated seed
supply system, also to the benefit of those farmers and gardeners that want to
use more diverse materials. France has already set the example in the fruit
sector, to show what can be done. Their parallel list for old fruits is less
demanding in genetic purity and cheaper to comply with. Such examples are worth
broadening, and should be extended to all species where registration is
currently necessary. Where we are cursed with biased legislation that works
against diversity, we must amend it. Current initiatives to introduce stricter
EC legislation over fruits and flowers, to match the rules governing
agricultural and horticultural crops, go exactly in the wrong direction.

While fighting to change laws that effectively restrict
competition and diversity in the first link of the food chain' we also have
urgently to knock some reasonableness into the current schemes that grant
intellectual property rights over plants. If, in the market, there is an urgent
need to guarantee people's rights to sell seeds, then in the field, we need to
assert farmers' rights to use and re-use them. The reform of the Plant Breeders'
Rights system, as enshrined in the UPOV Convention of 1991, has already weakened
many of the particularities that justified this system as 'adapted' to the needs
of agriculture. In particular, the farmer's right to re-use seed harvested from
a protected crop variety has been scrapped, reformulated as a farmer's privilege
and will have to be decided upon at the national level. The strengthening of
Plant Breeders' Rights is not only bad news for farmers, but also restricts
activities in breeding, and thus affects consumers as well. One of the features
of the UPOV system will not allow breeders to use each other's varieties freely
if the results are genetically alike. This limitation on the free exchange of
germplasm will undoubtedly result in fewer breeders being able to compete,
which, in turn, is likely to result in more uniformity in the field.

Of course, the situation will be much worse if our governments
give in to the heavy pressure from the biotechnology industry to allow for
full-fledged patents on life forms. If permitted, patents in the breeding sector
would have a dramatic effect on availability of genetic resources for crop
improvement, benefiting only a few companies who can make a fortune on a few
genes. While Plant Breeders' Rights may make it economically difficult for
farmers to re-use seed from their own harvest, patents will make it downright
unlawful. And as companies patent whole species, plant characteristics and major
genes, they will be able to regulate competition with near perfection.

Whatever rights society decides to grant to the developers of
technology, they should be balanced with obligations. In the control of genetic
resources, which are so vital to food security worldwide and which depend to a
large extent on the contributions made by farmers, a balance must be struck.
NGOs working to secure a better basis for farming and food security are talking
now about the need to establish legislation on Intellectual Property Obligations
(IPOs) at national, regional and UN levels to ensure that there is a more
equitable balance of responsibilities.

IPOs should reflect society's legitimate demands for sustainable
agricultural development, a clean environment and food security. In the field of
plant breeding and biotechnology, this would mean that rights holders would be
asked to contribute to the management of biological resources by subscribing to
a set of internationally recognised guidelines for sustainable breeding. Some
preliminary ideas of what such guidelines could entail are provided in Box 5.1.

Box 5.1: Breeding for sustainable agriculture: IPOs

1 Measures to promote genetic diversity

(a) Diversification of breeding programmes

Plant and animal breeders should be required to broaden the
genetic base of agriculture by utilising a wider range of germplasm than
currently practised. Their programmes should be monitored and directed to help
discourage extreme forms of monoculture and be directed toward the development
of mixed cropping systems, multilines and varietal mixtures.

(b) Limitation on the wide-spread multiple use of single genes

With the new biotechnologies it becomes in principle possible to
widely incorporate the same 'single-gene solutions' in many agricultural crops
and livestock. Apart from further promoting genetic erosion, this would
exacerbate vulnerability to pests and diseases. Regulations should be drawn up
to prevent this.

(c) Establishment of Genetic Uniformity Ceilings (GUCs)

Governments should establish regional threshold limits on genetic
uniformity to be respected by breeders. When a single variety occupies a certain
percentage of that crop's acreage in a region, measures should be taken to
restrict further sales of the variety, promote the use of alternative varieties
in the same region, or oblige the breeder to contribute to regional conservation
efforts.

2 Support for conservation

(a) User's fee on biological diversity

Plant breeders should be subject to a tax on the commercial value
of their seed sales as a measure to support conservation of genetic resources.
The funds should be spent on national and regional conservation programmes that
involve both governmental and non-governmental organisations.(b) Support for
an international fund for the conservation of genetic diversity

Breeders enjoying intellectual property rights over plant material
should contribute to the worldwide effort to manage genetic resources through
multilaterally agreed payments to an international fund under the auspices of
the UN.

3 Cooperating with the broader genetic resources community

(a) Return what you take

Duplicates of germ plasm samples collected in farmers' fields
should be provided as well as information resulting from research on those
materials. Codes of Conduct on collecting, such as the one now bring worked on
in FAO, should be turned into binding national legislation.

(b) Offer what is not in use

Plant breeders should make genetic resources currently not under
trial freely available to researchers and community organisations.

(c) Honour farmers' rights

Breeders should respect the right of farmers to reuse seed from
their harvest without being subject to royalty charges. Legislation should be
developed to recognise the rights of the informal innovators who developed local
varieties in the first place, involving direct payment, adapted research and
other rights derived from the innovative activities of farmers.

The demands for stronger and stronger monopoly rights over our
genetic heritage have gone too far. There is no longer a balance between
society's interests and those of intellectual property rights holders. As
citizens dependent on the food supply and dependent on the availability of
genetic resources for our food security, we have to have the common sense to
start negotiating again on the basis of a give-and-take arrangement. A system of
rights without corresponding responsibilities is no system at all.

Democratising research

Perhaps the most daunting challenge in securing a sound basis for
agricultural development in Europe is reshaping the structure and process of
research. Science and technology not only have to be responsive to society's
real needs, apart from mere profit margins, but also have to promote the role of
people in innovation, rather than marginalise them. Western Europe once enjoyed
a strong public research environment, but as explained earlier, this is being
sold off to the private sector at an alarming pace. When corporate interests
take command of the test tube, we must take a second look at what kind of
control we are ceding to essentially uncontrollable interests.

A strong public research system working to design innovation in
agriculture is absolutely vital in several respects. First, we cannot expect the
private sector to do everything. In plant breeding over the past decades we have
seen what this means. Industry is not interested in certain crops or types of
farming that are not profitable in the short or medium term. This, however, dots
not mean we should deprive ourselves of those crops or those innovations. At the
same time, the public sector should also provide some healthy competition to the
private sector in the same field of work. We also need some margin of openness
about what kind of research is carried out and mechanisms to share information,
personnel and resources in a public structure. In essence, we need
accountability and forms of innovation that are not driven by commercial
interests alone.

But salvaging our public research sector from its own sell-out to
corporate financiers is only part of the problem. We desperately need to revamp
the very structure and direction of research so that the work agenda is decided
by the end-users and people are empowered through the process rather than merely
considered passive recipients of technology. In agricultural research, this
reversal of the top-down approach is more necessary than ever. Local solutions
to local problems have to be found through alliances between farmers,
scientists, small-scale industrialists and consumers. Farmers in particular have
for too long been cut off from institutional research. They obviously know their
needs and problems best, and they have an important role to play in agricultural
research. Farmers are - by necessity - innovators and experimenters, as well as
entrepreneurs. Tapping into this source of creativity and recognising its value,
would be of great benefit to promoting more responsive, 'real needs' research.

The bias against farmer-initiated and farmer-based research in
Europe is nowhere clearer than in the ways that 'unorthodox' agricultural
sciences, for example the work to strengthen the underpinnings of biodynamic
production or permaculture, are totally marginalised by the official sector and
the dominant doctrine. Yet these approaches to agricultural development are
extremely fertile and anything but unreasonable. Ecologically, they are geared
towards sound production methods that are both long term and holistic, with
diversity as a hinge to sustainability. Socially' they are eminently popular
approaches to research and experimentation that bring people into the process of
innovation rather than shut them out.

No one is against cutting edge research. The problem is that
people have been cut out of it. There is no social control over research in
Europe, just 'temperament testing' of new technologies when they arrive packaged
at our doorsteps. Take biotechnology, for example. A lot of public criticism has
emerged from NGOs, farmers and consumers organisations and environmental groups
about the directions and control, the safety and relevance, of this new and
powerful bundle of techniques and how they are put to use. Many of these people
have been unfairly labelled as Luddites and anti-science obscurantists. That is
to look at the issue from the wrong perspective. What many public and
professional interest groups are crying out for is some form of transparency and
democratic decision-making over science and technology. That kind of dialogue,
consultation and participation in research and development is simply absent.

Clearly, the current structure and direction of agricultural
research in Europe is inadequate to face the need to involve society - and the
different 'consumers' of technology - in planning, directing and evaluating how
we put science to work for us. Alienating people from the research process
creates a sterile intellectual environment and a culture of irresponsibility
that can become explosive. Resources and the development of technology have to
be shared more democratically so that people will invest in innovation, and not
forever be expected just to swallow what they are
sold.